Rain's Gonna Come Down
by I hart Booth
Summary: Sometimes it hurts so much he can't breathe, can't think, can't even cry. And in those times, he needs her there. Oneshot, BB, mostly booth tho.


**This is a oneshot based on the song _Rain_ by _John Heintz_. it's a really great song, actually this is for a challenge with Niah1988, which I think is over, but I was finally inspired and so...here it is. It is quite a bit angsty and I can't say no one dies, but I can say that no one important dies. **

* * *

No lights were on, from the street it looked like no one was home. In some ways, that was true.

After his third fourteen-hour day in a row, Booth drug himself inside his apartment at some ungodly hour long past midnight and was too exhausted to sleep. He dropped his keys, coat and bag on the floor and moved to the kitchen, not at all phased by the first crack of thunder when it resounded overhead.

To him, the quiet inside his apartment could not be breached. He pulled out a single beer and started to grab the remote and so as to immerse himself in blue lights and an old movie, but slowly retracted his hand from the object. Something about the usual comfort of TV didn't feel right tonight and he left the kitchen without it.

Settling onto the couch, his fingers found a familiar loose thread and picked at it absently. The steady, eerie rapping of rain on the window worked it's way into his cloudy mind and he found himself wondering when the downpour had begun.

Another sip of beer and the cool water continued to pelt heavily against the window, demanding entry. Light shone from a streetlight outside and cast watery shadows across the walls and the photos of smiling people that covered them. The shadows fell across him as well and the whole room had the oddest feeling of movement and stillness al at once. He closed his eyes and breathed deep, but it didn't change the inexplicable weight he felt pressing on his shoulders and chest. A car alarm sounded in the distance and thunder responded angrily to the intrusion upon its nighttime splendor.

He leaned forward, and pressed the heals of his hands to his eyes. His skin felt warm to the touch, but shivers kept running across his skin. His heartbeat was slow, loud, like the beating of a huge dusty bass drum somewhere on an empty sound stage.

He found he kept having to remind himself to breathe and he hated it. Breathing was just supposed to happen, it was supposed to be as easy as blinking, as raindrops falling from the sky. But he couldn't. The air was simply too think, his lungs too heavy, weighed down by the black heart he knew was his own.

He counted to three and inhaled, his eyes closed. A face, a voice played over and over in his head. One he desperately wanted to lock away somewhere in the darkness of this night, and at the same time, hoped he would never be able to put from his mind.

Three. Exhale.

He started again to reach for his beer, but stopped halfway and dropped his hand heavily back to his knee. He needed something much stronger than beer.

What bothered him most, was that he couldn't even cry. The pain, inexplicable weight he felt was so powerful he couldn't breathe, but he couldn't force a single tear from his eyes. At first he hadn't wanted to, he thought it was his duty to be strong for his father and mother, his sister-in-law and especially his nephew. Mathew was only eight, two years older than Parker, and the spitting image of his dad.

Jared.

Booth felt his chest tighten and he gasped but to no avail. The man's name snatched his breath away with a startling, frightening grip, crushing him and squeezing tears to the surface.

Inhale.

Booth wasn't ashamed of the tears that burned his eyes, he welcomed them and waited for them to fall. But when they didn't he cursed in frustration and slammed his fist against the table. He wanted so badly to grieve, to let go of the pain and the ache in his chest and his heart. To have some relief of the enigmatic pressure that seemed to be trying to squeeze the life right out of him, but it locked him in it's grip and took away the thick air he was trying to breathe.

Seeking release and not knowing where else to turn, Booth slowly got up and more fell than walked toward the sliding doors that led to his patio. He fumbled with the lock for a few seconds, his eyes stubbornly remaining blurry, before he threw it open. The cold springtime downpour greedily splashed inside, tainting the warmth and dryness of his apartment.

Outside, his black suite weighed down with the water and he closed his eyes to the drops that stung his cheeks as they fell and exploded against his skin and slicked down his hair.

"Why couldn't you just give him a heart that worked?" He screamed. His face turned upward, his voice strained with a desperation even Booth himself didn't understand or know the depth of, but not even the thunder could answer him. He wasn't sure if his accusatory question counted as praying, and he didn't think he cared. All that mattered was that he couldn't breathe and he couldn't cry and he wasn't sure he would make it out of this one alive.

A warm hand touched his own and he looked up. He would have been surprised to find that he was on his knees, hunched forward with exhaustion, if he wasn't already numb with cold and sorrow. But he was surprised to see her.

He'd thought he didn't want to see anyone, that being alone was all he deserved and all he could handle. But there she was, ruining her favorite top and that perfect auburn hair in this torrential downpour he'd launched himself into out of some twisted need for outer cleansing, and she was smiling.

Not a happy smile, thankfully, but not a sad one either, and he was more thankful for that. It was just her smile. The one that warmed him in places he thought were long dead, the one that frustrated and enthralled him. And, right then, it was the smile that gave him the strength to weep.

She gathered him against her as he began to shake, his face pressed into her shoulder as the sobs crashed into him with a force he thought might kill him. On their knees they embraced, soaking wet as thunder clapped overhead, buried in each other's grief.

Brennan cupped the back of his head and clutched is jacket with all her strength. She knew what it was to lose someone you loved. She knew what it was to grieve and what it was to cry.

But what she didn't truly know, and what Booth wasn't sure he'd ever be able to forget, was the bond shared between brothers.

So they stayed there, on Booth's second floor patio in the middle of the night, crying with the rain.


End file.
